Antiheroes are characters we love, hate, and also love to hate, all at the same time. The antihero is the main character in a story — the protagonist or the “hero” — and while they manifest some of the “heroic” qualities heroes are known for, like courage, honesty, compassion, and so forth, they also act in ways that demonstrate the polar opposite of those noble traits.The Sopranos’ Tony Soprano cries when the ducks leave his pool, but nonchalantly beats the living crap out of a guy who owes him money, and gleefully designs a massive insurance fraud scheme with nary a twinge of guilt. And that’s just in the first episode.Deadwood’s Al Swearengen will calmly perform euthanasia on a preacher and then mourn him, speak well of him, and innocently tell the Doc, “He passed,” even adding the gripe, “Waited ‘til I got him off the sled…I would have let him lay in state, but I need the room for my whores.”Breaking Bad’s Walter White will ceaselessly express his love for his wife and children, save Jesse’s life no matter what it takes, and then order the grisly prison execution of ten men because, well, it had to be done.House’s Dr. Gregory House will serve mankind by diagnosing the most difficult, most obscure diseases known to medical science, yet at the same time qualify for an award for the rudest, most arrogant, most misogynist MD ever seen on TV.Dexter’s Dexter Morgan, in a class of his own, routinely kills people he believes got away with heinous crimes, morphing into a “good guy” serial killer by ironically committing the identical crimes for which he plays judge, jury, and executioner.24’s Jack Bauer seems to have no boundaries regarding what he will do to get what he wants and achieve his goals: stop an assassination, stop the detonation of a nuclear bomb, save America, save the world, save his girlfriend, save the cheerleader (oops, wrong show) and so forth. But it’s all copasetic. After all, he’s the good guy, right?The Shield’s Vic Mackey considers the cash stashes of drug thugs his personal ATM. And so on, and so on. This article looks at eight of these lovable, loathable head cases, all of whom are guys we love to watch, even if we wouldn’t want to have them over for dinner. Or get arrested by them. Or have them as our doctor. Or get sick and be in the way. Or…WALTER WHITE (Breaking Bad)If there has ever been a better manifestation of the Jekyll & Hyde story on modern TV, I haven’t seen it. (Well, except, obviously, the many actual Jekyll & Hyde movies. We can safely ignore the 1995 comedy with Sean Young.) How did Bryan Cranston do it? How was he able to be Walter White one moment and Heisenberg the next? The answer is by being a world-class thespian, of course, but to watch the transformation is mesmerizing. He plainly played two roles on Breaking Bad, and we always knew which character he was inhabiting. Walter was the hapless husband who meekly obeyed his wife’s orders to get hard for a birthday handjob. He was the miserable part-time employee who timidly complied when his car wash boss Bogdan ordered him to get off the register and go scrub tires. But then he crossed paths with Jesse Pinkman, a former student turned half-assed meth cook and, after Walter created his first batch of “glass-grade” scante, Heisenberg was born. Heisenberg did things Walter White would have considered reprehensible. An amazing Infographic (tdylf.com) calculates the numbers of deaths Walter/Heisenberg was responsible for at 269 (which includes himself). In a two year period — from his 50th birthday to his 52nd birthday — Walter White changed from, as Breaking Bad creator Vince Gilligan put it, Mr. Chips to Scarface. And what makes him undeniably an antihero is that he was not only able to rig a machine gun to kill all the neo-Nazis in one fell swoop while humming a Marty Robbins tune, but also shed a tear during the moment he knew would be the last time he ever saw his daughter Holly again.TONY SOPRANO (The Sopranos)

Tony Soprano, like Walter White, cites necessity as the reason for his abominable behavior. In the “From Where to Eternity” episode (written by Michael “Christopher Moltisanti” Imperioli), Tony tells Dr. Melfi, “We’re soldiers. Soldiers don’t go to Hell. It’s war. Soldiers kill other soldiers. We’re in a situation where everyone involved knows the stakes and if you are going to accept those stakes, you’ve got to do certain things. It’s business.” But when do the ends not justify the means? In order to eliminate the myriad business and personal problems his nephew Christopher was causing him, Tony executes Christopher in the episode “Kennedy and Heidi.” Murdering a family member apparently doesn’t even come close to crossing Tony’s Line of Morality. But Tony has a heart, right? He loved his horse Pie-O-My and was grief-stricken when he died in a fire. He cried and had a panic attack when the ducks left his pool. He beat the stuffing out of Christopher for sitting on and killing Adrianna’s little dog in a heroin-induced stupor. His son AJ’s suicide attempt devastated him in ways he could have never imagined. And aye, there’s the rub. The contradictory duality of the antihero allows such Jekyll & Hyde/White & Heisenberg rationalizations for terrible, hurtful, criminal behavior. To Tony, being the head of a crime family means that function follows form, no matter who gets hurt in the offing.DEXTER MORGAN (Dexter)From 1976 through the present day, the state of Florida has executed 86 people. In the seven years that Dexter, which was set in Miami, Florida, was on the air, Dexter Morgan executed at least 158 people. (He tells us at one point that he has to kill someone at least once a month. Yikes.) But Dexter is, after all, seemingly one of the good guys. He’s a blood spatter analyst for the Miami-Dade Police Department and his job, his career — his mission in life — is to help the police solve crimes, most of which are heinous murders. So what’s with the Dexter disconnect? Dexter, like many antiheroes, embraces wholeheartedly the full “ends justifies the means” paradigm. Bad guys who get away with bad things deserve to die, and Dexter is quite happy to take care of that civic duty. Dexter adores his sister, Deb. He is a devoted and loving father to his son, Harrison. He is an excellent and professional craftsman at his job. He takes care of himself and gets lots of sleep which, he says, is the secret to his youthful good looks. But he has a world class, top-of-the-line set of killing tools, including those of both the manual and electric types. He buys plastic sheeting by the roll, garbage bags by the case, and can set up a meticulously designed kill room on very little notice. (And these rooms always thoughtfully have photos of the killer’s victims.) We know why Dexter is the way he is. It was that whole “watching his mother get dismembered in a storage container as a child while he sat in blood for days” thing. So this begs the question, if Dexter didn’t have to kill, would he have turned vigilante? Regardless of the answer, Dexter’s juxtaposition of doing good while eliminating evil by doing evil qualifies him as a one of the classic TV antiheroes of all time.VIC MACKEY (The Shield)There’s a reason the “badge” logo for The Shield is cracked and askew: it symbolizes the disintegration of the iconic definition of “police work” as employed by Vic Mackey. Vic Mackey is a TV antihero whose yin/yang, black/white, good/evil nature is on blatant display in the first episode and in every episode that follows. In the first episode, Vic gives a hooker friend some money and tells her to skip a few tricks and get some soup for her and her son. Then later, he uses a phonebook to beat the crap out of a pedophile to find out where he’s holding an 8-year-old girl. And then later, he kills a cop. His boss describes him as “Al Capone with a badge,” yet turns to him when the aforementioned 8-year-old girl’s life is in danger. Vic has an autistic son and does anything and everything to help him have a normal life. He loves his wife, is devoted to his Strike Team partners, and scolds a drug dealer for having kids wandering around a crack house. Yet he’ll steal cocaine from a crime scene, torture a suspect with pliers, and strip a guy naked on the street looking for drugs stashed beneath his gonads. Vic Mackey is the textbook antihero, and by the end of the series, bodies, both metaphorically and literally, are strewn around him like so many discarded syringes and dime bags.TOMMY GAVIN (Rescue Me)It’s likely that the rampant uncertainty about what Tommy Gavin would do next was the ubiquitous and dominant anxiety in the Gavin nuclear family. Also, because literally everyone in the Gavin extended family considered alcoholism a trait — like blue eyes — there was little surprise when drinking created nightmare scenarios, many of which involved a drunk Tommy screwing up. But boy oh boy, was he a firefighter par excellence. And that is what makes him a classic antihero. His behavior is, at the same time, righteous and ridiculous; noble and ignoble; respectful and reprehensible. He’s an alcoholic, a drug addict, and an adulterer, yet he unhesitatingly puts himself in harm’s way every day he’s on the job as a New York City firefighter. He saves lives; he destroys lives. He’s unfailingly devoted to his family; yet he cheats on his wife and enables his alcoholic daughter, who follows in daddy’s footsteps in the personal failings department. He’s ostensibly a devout Catholic (sort of) and fears Hell (especially after a horrifying near-death experience), but he wears his religion like a cap he can take on and off at will. He sees ghosts — and has conversations with them. The question permeating the entire Rescue Me series was, “How many times can Tommy screw up and get away with it?” And the inevitable ancillary question is, “Would Tommy have been a different person if 9/11 hadn’t happened?” Juggling the good/evil dynamic like a pro from Ringling Brothers’ made Tommy Gavin one of TV’s most compelling antiheroes.JACK BAUER (24)If Jack Bauer could fly, he’d probably give Superman a run for his money in the superhero business. This guy is amazing. “Bigger than life” doesn’t even come close. He saves lives, stops assassinations, puts the kibosh on nuclear explosions, and can handle torture — both giving and receiving — as if he were Torquemada himself. Jack Bauer might be the quintessential TV antihero because his actions are completely unambiguous. Everything he does — everything — is for a greater good, and we always know that with certainty. This is why coming to an understanding of antiheroes can sometimes be difficult: Considering the incredibly positive results Jack Bauer achieves, how can we hate him? He’s on our side. He’s a good guy. He’s the guy we’d want with us in a crisis. And watching our back. But then we’re faced with that pesky “ends justifying the means” problem. Jack’s actions, like the actions of many of the men discussed in this article, are often illegal, immoral, and violent, But he gets the bad guy!, right? Yes, he does. But at what price? It’s situational ethics vs. absolute morality when it comes to Jack Bauer. And guess which philosophical approach wins?GREGORY HOUSE (House, M.D.)Dr. Gregory House — always “House,” never “Dr.,” and, heaven forefend, never “Greg” — is a genius. He can diagnose illnesses that everyone else gives up on and simply relinquishes the soon-to-be-dead patient to the morgue. House’s mind works at Internet speed to learn the symptoms, assess them in a free-floating process of diagnostic association, and come to a conclusion that, while always seeming farfetched, always ends up being right. He’s brilliant, and since he was modeled on Sherlock Holmes, he also has his own Watson — an oft-beset upon best friend and colleague — in the form of Dr. James (never “Jim,” except by annoying old friends) Wilson. House is also a misanthrope, a misogynist, a sexist, and a drug addict. He rejects and disrespects authority, won’t talk to a patient unless he absolutely has to, considers his colleagues boring, and redefines the term “loose cannon,” setting the bar extremely high for using it to describe any other maverick you can think of. He eats lots of Vicodin, and plays guitar and keyboards. He loves the nature channels, and thinks nothing of blurting out the most outrageous remarks to friends, foes, patients, and fellow doctors. But he’s worth it, right? Essentially, yes. His medical wherewithal outweighs his obnoxiousness. The final diagnosis for House is: medical know-how, good; personality and people skills, malignant.AL SWEARENGEN (Deadwood)The story was that Al brought Jewel to Deadwood and The Gem as nine cent pussy. Because she was afflicted with cerebral palsy, Al knew he couldn’t charge regular prostitute prices for her so, as the entrepreneurial businessman he was, he figured out a way to satisfy all buyers, even those with only nine cents. But the story was probably bull. Trixie believed he kept Jewel around as his “sick way of protecting her,” which makes all the sense in the world when we look at the duality that is Al Swearengen. Al is brutal…and compassionate. Violent…and tender. Duplicitous…and honorable. (As Silas Adams put it, “When he ain’t lyin’, Al’s the most honorable man you’ll meet.”) Al will euthanize a dying friend, and the way he does it makes it seem kind and empathetic. Al will order the execution of an innocent girl to satisfy Hearst, protect the town and his own business interests (Jen), but make it clear that he fully understands Johnny’s pain over losing his blameless girlfriend. Heartlessness is not Al’s default state. He is the Tony Soprano of Deadwood, and even though his love for Johnny, Dan and, above all, Trixie, is often masked by harshness and cruelty, it’s there. We know it. We can see it. And in the end, a TV antihero rationalizes his behavior by effectively proclaiming through his actions, “It’s only business.”